Forgoing standardized tests for one year a reasonable tradeoff to ensure better Common Core implementation

California schools are in the midst of perhaps the biggest transformation in their history -- a shift to a stronger system of academic standards, curriculum and testing called Common Core. It will change nearly everything about education and require everyone, from the state superintendent to part-time teaching assistants, to alter what they do so that more kids graduate from high school with essential 21st-century skills.

That's what's behind a bill passed last week by the Legislature, and expected to be signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, to suspend most standardized tests, including the STAR test, for a year. Instead, under this bill, nearly all students would take a field test of the new assessments, rather than the 20 percent that had been planned. That will give students and teachers practice using computers, rather than No. 2 pencils, to answer questions while providing essential feedback to test developers trying to come up with a final version to be given starting in 2015. And it will free schools of the burden of offering two sets of tests.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has threatened to withhold some funding if California proceeds. He and others worry parents won't know how their kids and schools are doing -- a particular concern for kids with disabilities and English-language learners -- and that's fair. To us, though, the lack of tests and scores next year seems a reasonable trade-off for educators to have desperately needed time to prepare for Common Core and to give more students exposure to the new tests, which won't be scored in 2014.

California schools are in varying stages of transition, with many mixing old and new curriculum. So if the state were to give the old tests next spring -- even though educators had taught some material geared to new standards -- the results would be of questionable value.

Isn't the whole point of the new system that the old one wasn't good enough? It didn't do enough to help students learn to explore, experiment and analyze -- essential 21st-century skills. Jettisoning these tests a year early allows educators to spend more time preparing for a better future.

The preparation is a massive undertaking -- and it comes as districts are also beginning the switch to a new finance system. They need the yearlong break, but we'll be watching to ensure state officials reinstate a complete testing regime for 2014-15.

We urge the state board of education and Duncan to put aside past disagreements to develop a waiver to the No Child Left Behind accountability law that's needed to proceed. After all, California's primary goal is the same as Duncan's: a successful transition to Common Core so that schools can do a better job preparing kids for college and a career.